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JUSTICE HONG KONG BRANCH
Avenues to voice Grievances in Hongkong
In a report by Justice, entitled "The Citizen and the Adminis- tration-The redress of grievances", the Rt. Hon. Lord Shawcross has this to say: "In the ever growing complexity of the modern state, the interventions of central and local government into the lives and affairs of the ordinary citizen, inevitably multiply. For the most part, no doubt, these interventions are for beneficient purposes and have beneficient results. But the nature of governmental and local governmental activity is now such that large areas of discretion are created in regard to all sorts of matters affecting the lives and rights of ordinary people in varying degrees. The general standards of administration in this country are high, probably indeed higher than in any other. But with the existence of a great bureaucracy there are inevitably occasions, not insignificant in number, when through error or indifference injustice is done or appears to be done. The man of substance can deal with these situations. He is near to the Establishment; he enjoys the stature or possesses the influence which will ensure him the ear of those in authority. He can afford to pursue such legal remedies as may be available. He knows his way around. But too often the little man, the ordinary humble citizen, is incapable of asserting himself. The little farmer with four acres and a cow would never have attempted to force the battlements of Crickle Down. The little man has become too used to being pushed around; it rarely occurs to him that there is any appeal from what "they" have decided. And as this Report shows, too often in fact there is not."
The situation as described above is even truer in Hongkong than it was in the United Kingdom.
There is in Hongkong a lamentable lack of simple, inexpensive and effective machinery for safeguarding fundamental rights and freedoms and for enabling those who have suffered from violation of their rights to receive assistance in obtaining redress.
In Hongkong the Umelco (office of unofficial members of the
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